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Monday, June 30, 2014

Carol and Osama are good friends; it's sad to see them leave, physically that is. I am constantly asked by visitors, what I think the ultimate goal of Israeli actions on the ground is. Well, this is it. The goal is for us to leave or vanish--no less. Given we will do neither, collectively, as a people, buckle up for the long haul. Humanity must prevail before peace pokes out its head.

Read their story here:

'So long, Israel, and thanks for nothing'

As a Palestinian Israeli married to a Palestinian, we've been waiting for Israel to grant us permission to live together. 15 years later, forced to choose between homeland and family unity, we have finally left.

Thursday, June 19, 2014

I have had enough of those Palestinians. I think the world in general
is also fed up with Palestinians. They have gone too far in demonizing Israelis
and must be stopped. The international community must act now before it is too
late and Israel is wiped off the map and a second tragedy of historic
proportions fall on a significant part of the world’s Jewish population.

For starters, Palestinians embarked by land, sea and air onto Israel
and displaced more than half the Jewish population of Israel in 1948. Imagine, more
than half of the population of Israel displaced, forced to live to this day, 66
years later, in squalid refugee camps only hours from their homes. Other than
some faint attempts to fight their way back to their homes in Israel, Israeli
refugees have been “unreasonably reasonable” in accepting their fate, and
continue to patiently wait for word when they can return home to Israel. This
man made tragedy was perpetrated by Palestinians, who continue to this day to
strangulate Jewish citizens of Israel by the use of brute force and economic
suffocation in an attempt to have them voluntarily emigrate elsewhere.

Palestinians are a violent people. Every Palestinian high school
graduate is forced into mandatory conscription, three years for males and two
years for females. During this military stint, every Palestinian citizen is
trained on the use of weapons and combat methods. Many Palestinians brag about
how they brutalize Jewish Israelis during their military service; some have
even posted photos on their Facebook wall of them posing with Israeli corpses
or a blindfolded Israeli who was taken prisoner.

Palestinians are making Israeli livelihood miserable. They have set up
military checkpoints in and around major Israeli cities, like Tel Aviv, Haifa, and
Eilat. Palestinian soldiers stop only Israeli cars, sometimes for hours on end,
while letting Palestinian registered cars ride through their checkpoints unhindered.
When an Israeli wants to leave Israel, s/he must get Palestinian permission
beforehand. If any Israeli gets on the Palestinian blacklist, his/her ability
to leave Israel is impossible. Imagine not being able to leave your own country
or being allowed to leave but not to return. Even when Israelis want to travel
from one Israeli city to another, Palestinians have set up checkpoints, which
resemble the border terminals between the US and Canada, with one difference:
the process to pass is one of pure humiliation, more like cattle being pushed
through caged pathways than passengers crossing a terminal.

Israel has a huge potential to be a regional economic hub of tourism
and trade, but Palestinians are blocking Israel’s ability to economically
develop by every means possible. Israelis love technology, but every smartphone
in Israel is a dumb phone because Palestinians are refusing to allocate the
electromagnetic spectrum—which they control as part of their occupation of
Israel—required for 3G services to Israeli telecommunications companies. Can
you imagine, those Palestinians are actually refusing to free the airspace
above Tel Aviv to Israelis! It gets worse. Israelis have found a huge natural
gas well in Israeli territorial waters, in the sea of Tel Aviv, and the
Palestinians are refusing to give Israeli firms access to tap the gas. Even
Israeli fishermen are routinely shot at when fishing in the Mediterranean Sea.

As if all of this was not bad enough, for the past 47 years
Palestinians have slowly moved their citizens to the hilltops around Israeli
cities. The hilltops were first confiscated by the use of force, then Arafat,
and now Abbas, send Palestinian security forces to protect the confiscated
lands. Once the lands are ready, Palestinians have tapped the huge amounts of
funds that donors have passed to them and used the funds, not to build schools
and a health care system, but rather to build permanent housing in these
military enclaves around Israeli cities, in order to entice Palestinians from
Ramallah and Hebron to move to Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities. This is not
only against international law, but defies common sense. How can Palestinians
keep paying lip service to wanting to live in peace with Israelis when they
keep gobbling up more Israeli land and move their population to take up
residence inside Israel?

You think it cannot get worse? Well, you’re wrong. Palestinians have
kidnapped 5,000 Israelis from their homes, about 200 are Israeli children under
18 years old, and have locked them into Palestinian jails. These jails that the
Palestinians maintain are all built inside Palestinian lands in the West Bank
and Gaza. When Israeli mothers want to go visit their loved ones, they must get
permission from Palestinian security forces to visit. Hundreds of those 5,000
prisoners are being held without charge; the Palestinians deceitfully call it
Administrative Detention. You would think the world would hold these
Palestinian jailers accountable, but they haven’t for decades. This is why the
time has come to stop those Palestinians once and for all.

Israelis cannot be expected to live like this forever. Something must
be immediately done to stop these Palestinians and hold them accountable for
the daily atrocities that they are committing against humanity. Israelis are a
peace loving people. They come from a religion that rests on a pillar of social
justice. What is being done to them is beyond imagination.

Israeli civil society has made a call for the world to divest from
Palestine. Israelis across the political spectrum are referring to how Jews
around the world supported the boycott and divestment of Apartheid South Africa,
which successfully collapsed that racist regime. Jews are pointing to their
always being on the correct side of history, from the US civil rights movement
to people’s struggles in Latin America. They now beg the world to act to stop
Palestinians before it is too late.

The time is now to boycott Palestine, divest from Palestine, and apply
serious sanctions on Palestine until it removes the boot of military occupation
from the necks of Israelis.

Sam Bahour is a Palestinian-American
business consultant in Ramallah, the West Bank, and blogs at epalestine.com. He
contributes this satirical piece in the spirit of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984). To make this piece fit today’s
reality, just reverse the roles of Israel/Israelis and Palestine/Palestinians.

Tuesday, June 03, 2014

Palestinians have finally created what has been coined as a "unity government" after nearly eight years of paralysing division between the two largest political parties, Fatah and Hamas. This step is extremely overdue, but should be welcomed nevertheless for what it is - a baby step in the right direction, finally accepting government for what it is, a branch of politics and not some technocratic institute.

The Palestinian political spectrum is much more colourful than the bipolar duopoly that this new government depicts. If Palestinian decision-makers are serious about reconstituting an operating Palestinian political system, then no time should be wasted in passing a political party law so new political groupings, mainly youth groups, can organise politically, and then subsequently be allowed to enter elections for all levels of Palestinian governance - starting with the PLO and ending with the Palestinian Legislative Council.

In the meantime, US and Israeli threats against the government because Hamas has joined it are strategically misplaced. One must ask, where does the US and Israel want Hamas to be – in a transparent political system or in underground trenches? Regardless, the Palestinian government is not any other country's business, unless that is, they allow Palestinians to choose the Israelis we accept to lead Israel.

Monday, June 02, 2014

The report concerns the major Israeli agricultural export companies presently operating in occupied territories and demonstrates the severe implications of an Israeli-only agriculture in occupied Palestinian and Syrian lands.

Sam Bahour - Photo

About Me

Sam Bahour is a Palestinian-American based in Al-Bireh/Ramallah, Palestine and is managing partner of Applied Information Management (AIM), which specializes in business development with a niche focus on start-ups and providing executive counsel.
Bahour was instrumental in the establishment of two publicly traded firms: the Palestine Telecommunications Company (PALTEL) and the Arab Palestinian Shopping Center. He is currently an independent director at the Arab Islamic Bank, advisory board member of the Open Society Foundations’ Arab Regional Office, and completed a full term as a Board of Trustees member and treasurer at Birzeit University. In addition to his presidential appointment to serve as a general assembly member of the Palestine Investment Fund, Palestine’s $1B sovereign wealth fund, Bahour serves in various capacities in several community organizations, including co-founder and chairman of Americans for a Vibrant Palestinian Economy, board member of Just Vision in New York, board member and policy adviser at Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network, and secretariat member of the Palestine Strategy Group.